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Yato's avatar

I like Derozan's purely on the aesthetics and degree of athletic difficulty. Jokic was a head's up play, and, while 75' alley-oops are not easy by any stretch, I think it was more just the unexpected nature of it than a truly high-degree of difficulty pass.

A few other notes on fancy passes.

1) One of my favorite type of 'passes' is not a singular pass, but the bang-bang-bang, hockey-assist/harlem globetrotter like multi-pass sequence. The Warriors had one against Cleveland the other night, where Steph no-looked a dime to Dray in the paint, and Dray rainbowed the ball immediately over his defender for GP2 to climb the ladder and throw down a reverse slam. Washington had a really nice one, too earlier in the year where Denny Avidja made a nice cross-court bounce pass to Poole on a fast break, and Poole immediately lofted it towards the rim for Kuzma to finish the alley-oop.

2) Speaking of Avidja, he's one of those jack-of-all trade players, master of none, but if I were to single out one skill that stands out in his repertoire above all else, it is his passing. He makes a lot of no-look behind the back passes in transition that seem to come within the flow of the game (i.e., not flamboyant or risky), and his ability to see the floor leads to a lot of nice assists. It's a shame the Wizards seem lost on offense, as a whole, though, as within the right system, he might flourish with his IQ.

3) A few other passes I've liked this year include:

- Steph's no-look alley-oop from behind the 3-pt arc to a back-cutting GP2

- Marcus Smart diving to the ground for a loose ball (as you'd expect Smart to do), but then flipping it backwards to a teammate as he slid across the floor for an easy bucket.

- Kyrie Irving's literal 'touch' pass that re-directed a Doncic pass up towards the rim for Derrick Jones Jr. to slam home

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Oded Ross's avatar

Haliburton also holds the TO-less assist record for 3 games, 40 from last season.

The 2-game list doesn't prove Porter had no turnovers, as TOs are incomplete prior to 1984. And Lucas had 29, not 27.

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